Latest revision as of 20:35, 14 July 2011

FreeMind source code files are licensed under GNU GPL V2+. However, FreeMind as a whole program bundled with libraries or components is licensed under GNU GPL V3+, which is contained in GNU GPL V2+. The reason for the difference is that FreeMind links to libraries or components licensed under Apache 2.0, a license compatible with GNU GPL V3 but not with GNU GPL V2.

Issues

The use and distribution of libraries by FreeMind raises two issues:

Distribution of open-source libraries: depending on the license used, we would need to make the source code available. This could be done IMHO (Eric L.) simply by putting a copy of the sources in SF's download section (without making those an integral part of our packages).

Usage of GPL-incompatible libraries: believing this FSF note, we can make sure that FreeMind can use GPL-incompatible libraries but we need to make it explicit in our copyright. I (Eric L. 05:56, 24 Mar 2008 (PDT))suggest to ask the current and former copyright holder and add a note in each source file that there is an exception on GPL-incompatible libraries, and explicit this exception in the "license" file.

License header

The license header in a code file:

/* FreeMind - A program for creating and viewing mind maps
* Copyright (C) 2000-<YEAR> <AUTHORS>
* See COPYING for Details
*
* This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
* modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
* as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
* of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
*
* This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
* but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
* MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
* GNU General Public License for more details.
*
* You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
* along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
* Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
*/

Projects bundling Java

Project

License

Link

Note

StopMojo

GPL plus a special statement giving blanket permission to link with non-free software.

Note 1: The files implicated seem to come from mmTree where the original Author keeps very similar versions under MIT license, which would be compatible with GPLv2+. Eric L. 10:08, 22 Mar 2008 (PDT) ⇒ Asking the author Miika Nurminen for his OK to place the files in our CVS under MIT license as well (else we'll have to derive a new version from his files). Eric L. Miika answered and is OK to have all files under MIT license, once it's properly modified in the CVS, we'll be fine.

Copyright notice in code

A source file may be viewed as a sum b + d1 + d2 + ... + dk, where b is the basis, di are deltas (or patches), and the plus operator is the operator of applying a patch. The basis and each delta have their own copyright holder and the year of copyright.

If there is only one author and one year, then the copyright notice is simple.

If there is only one author and more years, then the copyright notice may look like